1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of video information analysis and in particular fraud detection using an intelligent video monitoring system, for example, relating to point-of-sale (POS) activities.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Retail stores have found that customer returns have been associated with fraud. For example, unscrupulous employees process customer return receipts through the point of sale (POS) computer system without the customer actually being present, issuing fraudulent refunds that can be pocketed by the employee. Retail establishments have attempted to combat this with increased supervision, as well as monitoring of video cameras located near the return aisle. However, it is impractical to have a human supervisor continually monitor either a live camera feed, recordings made by the camera, or the return aisle itself.
Intelligent video monitoring has become known in recent years. This type of monitoring allows certain suspicious activities to be detected by analyzing video information stored on a computer video surveillance system. However, the sheer amount of video to be searched makes this a daunting task.
Prior video monitoring systems for detecting consumer return fraud intercepted the return receipt event and the video is analyzed in real time. However, this takes an extremely large amount of CPU time and limits the times at which the analysis can be done to relatively contemporaneously with the potentially fraudulent event.